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We all have goals we want to accomplish in our lives, but our mindset often holds us back from actually accomplishing them. Here are three mindset shifts I have found to work and that will assist you in accomplishing your goals.

Shift #1: Focus on what you are adding to your life (not what you are taking away) – So often, when we set a goal for ourselves, we focus on deprivation. Let’s say our goal is to lose weight. If we are depriving ourselves, we’ll try to focus on eliminating all unhealthy food from our diet in one go. This causes us to focus on all the foods that we can’t have. As a result, we tend to desire them more. Instead of focusing on what you are eliminating from your life to accomplish your goal, focus on what you are adding. For instance, aim to get a certain amount of protein or x amount of fruits and veggies in every single day. By focusing on that, you’ll naturally eat less of the “bad” stuff, but your mind will be focused on adding the good stuff. This makes accomplishing your goal feel completely different than when you take the traditional deprivation route.

Shift #2: Turn your failures into feedback – Instead of spending your time beating yourself up for “messing up”, focus on what you learned when you got off track. By turning every “mess up” into a learning opportunity, you set yourself up for future success. When something that gets you off track comes up again, you will know exactly how to react if you’ve turned that past failure into feedback. If you don’t do this, you’ll just get in an endless cycle of beating yourself up.

Shift #3: Set small milestones and reward yourself regularly – The funny thing about the women I work with (myself included), is that we have a tendency to beat ourselves up for what we don’t accomplish and gloss over what we do. It’s so important to give yourself credit for every baby step you take because those baby steps add up! When you are rewarding yourself regularly, you build momentum more easily. When you have more momentum, things get accomplished much more quickly. Divide your goal into smaller baby goals and then set up rewards for yourself. I like to reward myself at least weekly for accomplishing my goals, but doing it daily to start is best. Even if it’s something simple and free, like having your husband or a neighbor watch the kids for 15 minutes while you read a chapter of a book, it works! It doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive gesture in order to be effective. If you need help breaking down your goals and setting up a reward system, I can help you with that during a 1:1 session.

These mindset shifts take practice implementing and probably won’t shift overnight. But over time and with practice, you will adopt them as your own and do them automatically. You’ll forget that you ever tried to accomplish your goals any other way!

Now over to you…do you practice any of these mindset shifts? Are there any mindset shifts that you have found that have personally empowered your ability to accomplish your goals? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!